# Michael Lipton

michael lipton (born 13 February 1937) is a British economist specialising in rural poverty in developing countries, including issues relating to land reform and urban bias. He has spent much of his career at the University of Sussex, but also contributed to the work of international institutions, such as the World Bank's 2000/2001 World Development Report on poverty. He was reader, then professorial fellow, at the university's Institute of Development Studies 1967–94, and since 1994 he has been research professor at the University of Sussex's Poverty Research Unit, which he founded.Lipton was elected to the British Academy in 2006 and shared the 2012 Leontief Prize.